Growing in Christ

To All:

My reasons for starting this thread are out of obedience to the Lord and because so many of us seem to be struggling to grow in Him. While I in no way know all there is to know of Him, and seek daily to learn from Him - both directly through His Word and His Spirit and from others who sit at His feet in Love - He continues to prompt me to take the risk and share what I have learned.

After He led me to share the following in another thread, He is now telling me to put this here. (In fact, in His gentle way, He will not leave me alone about it!) My constant prayer is to be pleasing to Him always, and be a blessing in some small way to others. And so it is with humility before Him that I offer this.

All I ask is that others will also post here what they have learned and are learning, that we may all grow in Him and come to the unity of faith, bonded together with Him in the Spirit of His great Love.


There was a time in my life when I did not think God liked me very much, when my whole life seemed to go from misery to misery. Yet, I believed; I knew the Bible very well; and I knew there was a love in me for Him. But I could never seem to get close to Him, and never really saw any specific answers to my prayers. I always felt as if I was following Jesus from way back in the crowd; as if I was climbing hills, only to catch a glimpse of Him going over another hill far in front of me. Finally, I just got fed up and told Him, "Lord. I don't care if You like me or not! I am still going to love You!" And right then, I made up my mind to know Him personally.

So what I would like to offer you are some practical steps that He led me to take (although at the time, I did not realize it was Him leading me) that He used to grow me and teach me and help me find Him. And what a difference this has made in my own prayer life.

1) Guard your tongue. Become aware of what you say out loud, for your words can rob you of any blessings He has for you. No matter how you feel, how depressed you get, etc., don't allow yourself to start speaking from those feelings. There are a multitude of scripture in the both the OT and NT which teach this.

2) Praise God. This truly helps in guarding the words of your mouth as well as overcoming negative feelings. You don't have to try to conjure up reasons for praising Him for the situation, just make up your mind to praise Him in the situation. He lead me (and I still do this at times when necessary) to say out loud: "I praise you Father that I am not moved by my feelings, but only by your Word. I praise you Father that I am not moved by what others say about me, but only by your Word." And so on. Truly, praise works!

3) Get His Word from your mind to your spirit. Two ways to help with this are (a) to never read the Bible without praying first, asking the Holy Spirit to guide you in it; to open your heart to receive what He is teaching you; to open your understanding to grasp it. Etc. And (b) go through the NT finding every passage where it talks about who we are in Christ and who He is in us. In other words, everything positive that applies to us being new creatures in Him. Make a tape recording of your own voice saying these passages, applying them to yourself. Our spirits pay attention to what we say, and since it is with our hearts that we believe - not our minds - by saying His Word aloud we can re-program our inner man according to that Word. Example: "I am the Righteousness of God in Christ." Then, play that tape! I would put on headphones at night and play it as I went to sleep, night after night for weeks.

4) Don't try to believe for more than you have faith to believe. Faith is like a muscle; it must be exercised in order to grow. Just as you would not begin lifting weights with the maximum amount - the goal you want to reach - until you built up to it, so don't try to believe too far beyond what you know you can believe for. Judging this is tricky, I agree. But you have to start somewhere and I believe the Lord will guide you. Many, many times I have wanted to believe, but had to admit I really did not have that big of faith. Don't set yourself up to fail; but don't set your sights too low either. Exercise your faith and it will grow, until you can believe for big miracles.

5) Make it your primary goal to know Christ Jesus. More than anything else, seek to know the Giver rather than the gift. Humble yourself - in your attitude especially - before Him and trust Him to guide you. Remember that love is not a feeling, rather love causes feelings. We know He loves us - just like we know anyone loves us - because He says He does. His love for us is not dependent upon our feelings about it, anymore than our parents love for us was dependent upon our feelings. Realizing this is extremely important in our being able to trust Him, for our trust - our faith - is very much dependent upon our knowing and believing in His love for us in Christ. And we know He loves us because His Word says He does, and God does not lie.

6) Remember we have an enemy and he is a liar! Daniel prayed and even though the Lord heard his prayer the first day, it took 21 days for the answer to come. Pray, believe (because of His Word) that in the Name of Jesus we can be sure that the Father hears and answers our prayers, and then persevere in thanking Him for answering our prayer. The enemy delights in robbing of us of our joy, faith, confidence, peace, etc., as well as the answers to our prayers. Stay the course!

7) Practice listening. Set some time (20-30 minutes) aside each day to sit quietly before the Lord. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you. Get a notebook and write what you hear inside. Don't worry about getting big revelations - because you probably won't; and don't worry if you don't get anything - because you may not for awhile. Consider it as you would any conversation: both sides talk in a conversation, not just one. So you are allowing the Lord His opportunity to speak to you and not you just talking to Him. And write down what comes to you. And even when you do begin to hear from Him, don't expect some earth-shattering revelations. For a long time the Lord had me practice this, just to learn how to hear Him no matter what was going on around me. And I am still learning. But measure everything you hear against His Word! And seek to be obedient to what He tells you. It is when we are faithful on the little things that He will trust us with bigger things.

8) Seek His will first and always. The Lord will never get in line with us; we must always get in line with Him. In all your prayers - for others as well as for yourself, seek His will.


May the Lord bless others through this, and continue to bless us all in the coming posts from His faithful ones.

LeastOne

leastone, excellent post, I really enjoyed your guidelines and hope to use them to help me in my daily walk, I pray this thread helps much and is a blessing to many.

Hi Everyone:

Molly, thank you. The Lord greatly encourages me through you, far more than I can adequately express.

The Spirit has reminded me of some additions to this list:

9) Confess your sins; get cleansed in the Blood of Jesus. The enemy gains influence over us through sin in our lives. No matter how great or small the sin, we are left exposed when that sin goes unforgiven. It does not matter if you have to bring the same sin before the Father day after day, do it. Never run from the Lord when you sin, rather turn to Him. And if you do not think you have anything to confess, ask the Holy Spirit to bring to your remembrance any sin you have unknowingly done. Then confess what comes to mind. So much of the time we say and think and do things that we never realize are sin. But what a difference in our relationship with the Lord it makes when we are honest with Him.

10) Fall in love with Jesus. If you base your walk with the Lord on your feelings, it will fail. If you base it on your understanding of His Word, it will fail. If you base it on your faith, it will fail. But if you base your walk with the Lord on love, it will succeed. Love never fails. Love establishes a foundation for everything else: trust, confidence, peace, faith, courage, joy. More than anything else, receive His love in your deepest parts and make everything you do a response to that love.

LeastOne

Hi Everyone:

Prov. 1:23 - "Turn to My reproof: behold, I will pour out My spirit unto you, I will make known My words unto you."

Hebrews 12:6 - "For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives."

Hebrews 12: 11 - "All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness."


Once we had two Labrador puppies and since we knew little about training dogs, we bought a book by a professional dog trainer. In it the author advised taking the pups when they were between 6 months and 1 year old to a park every day, tying a long rope to their choke collars and then walking from point to point without ever saying a word to them. At first, those pups would take off this way and that, chasing every little thing that caught their attention. We would brace ourselves (because they were big) but continue walking, never saying a word to them. Within a few days, the change in them was amazing; they would follow at our heels most of the time, only occasionally running after something. After two weeks they never took their eyes off of us. For the rest of their lives they were the most well behaved dogs you could imagine. We saw the truth of what the author wrote: wherever a dog is looking is where his attention is; so to train them, thereby making them worth having around you, you want them looking at you always.

Humans are just like dogs: wherever our focus is aimed, that is what has our attention. And the Lord wants us looking to Him always. If we are looking at others, He doesn't have our attention. If we are looking at our circumstances or problems, He doesn't have our attention. If we are looking at ourselves, He does not have our attention. And He will continue to allow adversity in our lives until He gets our full attention always.

Hebrews 12:1 - "...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith..."

Col. 3:1 - "Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God."

To grow in Christ, pray for His discipline in your life. For when He can trust you to be obedient to Him is when you become useful to Him in His work.

Luke 6:46 - "Why do you call Me, `Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?"


LeastOne

Great thread leastone. Thank you so much for posting this, it's really really helpful

__________________

"Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."


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Hallelujah leastone, dont know why your name is leastone, should have been greatone, these are awesome these our everything Gods been teaching me...................................................Hallelujah thank you Jesus for confirming what you been teaching me...

.

Awesome!


LW

Leastone,


May God richly bless you for sacrificing your time to share with us what you have been taught by God!!

__________________
"These Things I Have Spoken Unto You
That In Me Ye Might Have Peace. In the World Ye Shall
Have Tribulation, But Be Of Good Cheer; I Have Overcome
The World" -- John 16:33

Hi Everyone:

With all my heart I thank you all for your encouragement in this; only the Lord knows how much that encouragement means to me, for my deepest desire is to be pleasing to Him and be a blessing to others in some way, however small. For truly, only the Lord Jesus is the Great One and worthy of praise!

Before sharing what the Spirit has given me this morning, I must say that I am continuously amazed at how the Lord can take various events of our lives and teach us through them! So many times He has done this with me, reminding me of some trivial experience and then showing me a spiritual lesson in it. The Father is truly an awesome God!

1 Cor. 12:12 - For as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is [the Body of] Christ

Col 1:18 - He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.

Eph. 4:15 - but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.


In high school I had the pleasure of playing on an undefeated basketball team one year. None of us were particularly great players, but that one season we just clicked as a team and so played the entire year way above our individual abilities. It was as if we could read each others minds, and so game after game we made really great plays, amazing even ourselves at times, and beating opponents who did have some really good individual players.

Because we each knew that we were not that great by ourselves, we paid close attention to our coach, recognizing that he alone was the head of our team. And the result was a tremendous season, with all of us having a lot of fun all season long as well.

The next season we had a new kid who was a much better basketball player than any of the rest of us were. Everyone expected us to be even better than the year before because of this new addition but, because he did not play with the same unselfishness as we did, and continued to play the way he wanted to - and especially because he did not pay attention to what the coach said - we did not do so well that year.

And so it is with the Body of Christ.

1 Cor. 12:26 - And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.

Each of us must realize that that there is not my ministry and your ministry - there is only His ministry!

When I fail to do my part as a member of His Body, all of you suffer; if I continue to ignore Him and do what I think should be done, and say what I think should be said, then I am failing both Christ Jesus and the rest of you.

For me, recognizing the truth of this in myself - admitting to myself and especially to the Lord Jesus my own selfishness and willfulness and disobedience and even rebelliousness - this causes me great shame before Him. And though I know that it is He who has brought this to my attention, and the Father has forgiven me for it when I confessed it to Him and washed me clean in the precious Blood of the Lamb; still, even now, I have tears in my eyes in writing this, it so grieves my heart before Him!

As members of His Body, we each have a part to play in the working together of that Body. Only as we learn to listen to the Lord Jesus - Who is the Head of that Body - and learn to be carefully obedient to what He says; only then will the works of the enemy be destroyed completely, and he be crushed under Christ's heel. Then will Christ Jesus "...come to be glorified in his saints" and we who are His be revealed as the sons of God.

2 Cor 10:6 - and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.

I honestly did not know what He would have me write today; I did not know even as I sat down to begin writing that this would come out, for I am learning to write only what I hear inside and so do not plan anything ahead of time.

But I truly pray that this message speak to each of you as deeply as it has me this morning.

LeastOne